Tiempo Pasado
by EvilSalmon
Summary: Just some random character fluff -- looking at Hoshi's past from waaaaay back. (it's added to and changed a tad)
1. La Danza

**Tiempo Pasado by Jenn**

**Summary**: A random piece of character fluff.  I read somewhere that Linda Park did ballroom dancing, and I ran with it.  
**Disclaimer**: Don't own it.   Swiped Pan Pacific Grand Prix from _Strictly Ballroom,_ because that movie's the bomb and I don't know enough about ballroom to come up with something half-viable on my own. ;-)  
PG-13 for some language.  
  


Sixteen-year-old Hoshi Sato eyed the clock on the wall like a hawk.  She still had a full half hour to go.  It wasn't that she didn't like ballroom dancing classes; in fact it was exactly the opposite.  She especially loved the rhythmic sambas and mambos.  Just today, it was taking forever, and she really wanted to be working on that Latin Virgil.  

Lately, Hoshi felt like she was being pulled in two completely equal but opposite directions.  She loved dancing; she loved it with all her heart, but then there was language... more and more these past few months, she felt like she needed a definite direction to focus her energies.  Limping along doing half this, half that wasn't going to cut it anymore.  She'd already missed eleven Spanish classes for the Pan Pacific Grand Prix, and her five-day French oratory finals had almost cost her her ballroom partner. 

Thwam!  Suddenly, Hoshi was drawn out of her reverie as she knocked her knee into the barre lining the mirror-covered studio walls.  "_Merde_," she muttered under her breath.  

"Hosh!" her partner Paul rebuked her.  "You haven't been with me this whole class!  Could you please focus just a little?"  

_Más mierda_, she thought.  "Sorry.  I'm just a little out of it today, that's all.  Can we take it from the top?"

"Yeah, okay, sure.  Just remember that turn is on five, **and six** **and seven**, eight.  You keep coming in late."

Hoshi nodded softly, groaning inwardly as their instructor walked over to them.  Well, maybe she was headed towards Alison and Sergey.  Then again, maybe not.  No such luck.

"Are you two doing all right?" she asked, her clear blue eyes coolly assessing the situation.

            "**I'm** doing considerably well, Elena, thank you."  

_Paul can be such an incredible bastard_, Hoshi thought as she gritted her teeth and forced a smile for her instructor.  "I'm just having some trouble focusing today.  I'm doing the best I can."

            Elena patted her shoulder gently.  "I'm sure you are.  Such a talented dancer...you have so much grace!  I know you can put it to use."  She offered an encouraging smile before sauntering over to another nearby couple.

            Hoshi narrowed her eyes.  People always thought she was some fragile desert flower, needing every ounce of protection and encouragement she could soak up from the harsh environment that was the world.  Rubbing her knee ruefully, she glared determinedly into Paul's overconfident eyes.  "Let's do it." 

*


	2. Enchiladas

            Free!  Hoshi zipped her dance bag shut, elatedly swinging it over her shoulder and nearly sprinting out the door.  Kyoto had been unusually warm this March, and Hoshi drank in the humid air as she walked through the newly gentrified area surrounding the Kyoto Station.   It smelled like rain.  Hoshi sniffed as her nose detected the faintly acrid smell of cigarette smoke.  She sighed, knowing how some of her more reactionary compatriots would respond to that scent:  they'd be all over global unification in an instant, wishing they'd "Kept Japan for the Japanese."  "No citizen would dare smoke on the streets of Kyoto in 2107!" they'd declare with conviction.  And, well, Hoshi wasn't sure they were wrong.  But global unity certainly had its benefits, and to Hoshi those benefits outweighed a stray cigarette smoker here and there.  

As if on cue, Hoshi passed the former United Earth Nations building.  They'd built it up around the Kyoto Tower, constructing a graceful glass structure that added refinement to the already beautiful Kyoto skyline.  It was a pity the UEN had to move its headquarters to the safer locale of Geneva only two years later, frustrated over the all-too-near threats of radical Australian terrorists.  Hoshi shook her head, still unable to comprehend Australian logic.  Jeannie Buxton, her pen pal from Brisbane, had tried to explain it all to her once:  the idea of self-sovereignty, of being the lone voice of dissent on the last wild frontier... Who in their right minds would honestly hold out as the lone country against the entire world?  Granted, all UEN nations had given up their weapons of mass destruction as part of the required entry procedure.  But status in the UEN government was the crux of all international power.  How could Australia possibly hope to survive all alone, not only politically but also economically?

Hoshi shook her head vehemently.  Stop it!  Her Advanced World Studies class had taken over her brain, and she needed all the mental power she could get to tackle this Virgil. 

She ran up her building's steps two at a time, impatient to get out of the cramped stairwell and into her more spacious bedroom.  Two more flights, and she'd be there.  There was one thing Hoshi truly missed of her three years in the United States, and that was the space.  Here in Japan, everything was compressed and smushed and cinched into near oblivion.  Hoshi shivered quickly, reaching hurriedly for her house key.

"I'm home, Mom," Hoshi called, rushing through the entry way and into the kitchen, "and I'm quitting dance."  She dropped her dance bag emphatically as she sank into her chair, eyeing her dinner hungrily.

            Kioko Nakamura chuckled warmly, scooping spoonfuls of rice onto her daughter's plate.  "You say that every week, Hoshi.  What happened today?"

            "Paul is such an idiotic, arrogant jerk!" Hoshi shoveled a huge section of enchilada into her mouth.  "It's too bad he's one of Elena's best dancers.  I just can't work with him --" she paused to chew, " -- any longer."  Her mom smiled patiently, trying to appear sympathetic.  "These enchiladas are really good, by the way.  Did Dad help?"

            "Of course.  You really think a culinary failure like me could churn out enchiladas like that without the assistance of one amazing chef like your father?"  Yasuo Sato was, after all, the renowned winner of the Oklahoma State Fair Baking Contest from summer 2139 to summer 2142.

            Hoshi just chuckled, her voice muffled by her (closed) mouthful of food.

            "Thankfully, you seem to have inherited his aptitude for that.  I don't know what this family would do with one more kitchen-disaster-waiting-to-happen wandering around.  What with your brother's and my cooking skills, I'm surprised this kitchen has remained standing."

            Hoshi laughed again as she dumped her dinner dishes into the Super SaniScrub 2200.  "You're nuts, Mom.  I'm gonna go do homework."

            But when Hoshi finally sat down with the longed-for Virgil, she couldn't bring herself to concentrate on it, either.  Sighing heavily, she dimmed the lights and opened her curtains.  The stars were so beautiful, little pinpricks of distant light making connections across long distances, even across time.  The light she saw tonight had first shone from its star hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago, zipping at immense speeds and spanning the vast reaches of the galaxy.  The stars held the eternal promise of adventure, but also the comforting consistency of stability.  She sighed again.  There was another opposing force pulling at her heart.  Last year, Hoshi's Vulcan teacher had suggested to her that she apply to Starfleet Academy.  

"Your Vulcan accent is impeccable," he'd told her, "and it would be a shame to have to wait for the Vulcans to come to us for you to make use of your talents."  

Hoshi sighed again.  She didn't know what she really wanted anymore.  She'd toyed with anthropology for a while, but then she thought she'd really be better working in the UEN government's international department, studying international relations at Kyoto University... no matter what, she'd have to have an endless supply of opportunities to learn and speak new languages.  Couldn't she do that if she competed in international ballroom?  After all, dance was certainly a way of communicating, and...  Hoshi stopped herself, rolling her eyes.  This wasn't helping anything.  She'd just have to approach this logically, downplaying her wildly overactive emotions for once.  

She was starting to sound like a Vulcan.

She tapped the Virgil off her PADD's screen, dimming the lights completely before she crawled into bed.  This was going to be harder than she'd thought.

*


	3. Muy Cansada

Hoshi struggled to keep her eyes open, cursing her choice of the front seat.  Advanced World Studies usually fascinated her, but after a long, sleepless, windy night...  This was going to be hell, and Hoshi knew it.

She started off trying to look directly into the teacher's eyes, but she had to crane her neck at a completely unnatural angle.  She tried staring straight ahead, attempting to fake contemplation of Enhark-Yerneh's Single Earth Currency Proposal, but her eyes felt suspiciously glazed over and her head lolled dangerously to one side.  Finally, she decided to play the note-taking card, mindlessly recopying the lecture word-for-word so she could process it later on when she was actually half awake, but her brain-hand coordination gradually dissolved until her data PADD was covered in a landscape of geometric doodling.

"Ms. Sato!"  Uh oh.  Mr. Ikso-Hakim's voice cracked irritably. "What, pray tell, were the effects of Nametto v. Obekuah?"

There was an uncomfortable, scrambling silence.  "Nametto... versus... Obekuah was... an international court case..." think, Hoshi, think, "debating... the morality of having any currency at all!"  Shazaaaaaam!  Good girl!

Ikso-Hakim's eyes narrowed.  "I suppose I can see that... but I'm not sure the court case itself dealt with that issue directly.  It did, however, indirectly inspire that very debate.  Is currency a tool that fits within the frames of human morality?" And he was off, racing gallantly down his philosophical tangent at full speed.  Hoshi sighed, sinking dismally into her seat.  She was safe, but she'd failed, and failing was such an incredibly miserable feeling.  She had been silly to think she'd ever make it in to Starfleet Academy, much less any university at all.

Hoshi felt a wry smile of amusement creep up as she pictured them in her head:  Rational Hoshi taking on Defeatist Hoshi.

Rational Hoshi: "Why do you_ say stuff like that?  You know it's not true!"_

Defeatist Hoshi:  "Because it _is true!  I'm a failure!"_

Rational Hoshi:  "What are you _talking about?  You're getting just a tad over-emotional, don't you think?  I mean, you answer one world studies question wrong.  Big deal.  That doesn't mean that all of a sudden, you're going to end up a demoralized bum begging for booze on the side of a rapidly deteriorating road in Johannesburg."_

Defeatist Hoshi:  "Oooh, nice one.  'Demoralized bum.'  I'll have to remember that one for future use.  But don't you understand?  I _failed.  I'm not supposed to fail.  I know you don't think it's any big deal, but it is.  One faulty step down failure lane here, one foot in the letdown door there... sooner or later, I'm going to end up a nobody."_

Hoshi's focus recentered on the world outside as the bell rang to end class.  Oh, thank god, world studies was over!  Now she could relax into her 'language stretch':  Spanish 2nd hour, Mandarin Chinese 3rd, Arabic 4th, and Vulcan 5th.  By the time she would have to revive her brain for theoretical physics 6th, literature 7th, and calculus 8th, she would have had lunch, and lunch would solve everything. 

"Hey Hosh!"  a voice came from the hall outside.

"Mishal!"  Hoshi returned as she gathered up her stuff and headed for the doorway.  "Oh lord, I thought I'd never make it through AWS this morning.  How'd your psychology test go?"

Mishal Akhamet had been Hoshi's best friend for the past two years.  She shook her head, her chin length black hair swishing agitatedly.  "It was horrible, Hoshi.  I don't know what's wrong with me lately.  I can't focus, I can't study, I can't even think in a complete sentence without getting it completely turned around.  I thought I just needed to try harder, but it seems like the harder I try, the harder I fall.  What happened, Hosh?"

Hoshi hid a smirk, mildly surprised at Mishal's uncharacteristically lengthy chunk of conversation.  Mishal was usually an eye-talker, especially when it came to expressing emotions.  "I know how you feel.  I feel sort of the same way lately, which might mean it's just the time of the year or the general atmosphere of the people around us... but I have a different idea."  Hoshi quickly scanned the halls around them, stopping beside a row of lockers.  She lowered her voice conspiratorially.  "I see how you look at Mark O'Malley!  Now tell me that 1/3 of your thoughts aren't about him and I'll go looking for another theory."

Mishal reddened quietly, studying the grout patterns in the tile floor.  "You are way too perceptive for your own good, Hoshi. I think you might be right."           

Hoshi's features settled into a prim expression of self-satisfaction.  "Well, what are you going to do about it, then?"

            Fear darted quickly through Mishal's eyes as she declared flatly, "Absolutely nothing."

            Hoshi threw down her arms and looked skyward in frustration.  "Nothing?!  Mishal, you're going to drive yourself crazy!"

            "He's my lab partner.  I'm sure he doesn't even think of me as a friend.  'Doing something about it' would accomplish nothing... except to increase my own humiliation."

            Hoshi narrowed her eyes.  "Well, okay... but don't blame me if you can't even remember your own middle name in a couple months!"

            Mishal shook her head. "Come on, we'd better get to class." 


	4. Amante no Recompensado

            Hoshi barely made it through the doorway before the bell rang, and she felt herself being nearly withered to death by Señorita Huarte's glare. 

            "Lo siento!"  Hoshi apologized, quickly taking her seat.  Señorita smiled, in a miraculously good mood, replying with a cheery exoneration: "De nada, chica.  Sacan los libros, por favor, a la pagina noventa y ocho."  Hoshi dove for her Spanish instructional PADD, somehow managing to knock heads with the kid next to her.

            "Otra vez," she muttered.  _Once again..._ "Lo siento!"  She looked to see who she'd hit, and her eyes met with those of Robert Collins.  Hoshi hadn't ever gotten to know Robert very well, but he'd been in her physics class four years ago.  In fact, the only thing she happened to remember about him was that he had purposely sabotaged her team's chances in the class's final science bowl.  His gaze was suspiciously unwavering, and she looked away quickly.  She didn't even give it a second thought when he asked to see some of her notes on the subjunctive.  After all, she was known for her succinct but effective grammatical note taking, not to mention her unswerving willingness to help others out... She even smiled as he returned her data PADD, replying to his "thank you" with a friendly "any time."  After all, poor Robert Collins didn't seem to interact much with other kids, and if she could impart any small human kindness on him, that might encourage him to break through some of that shell and interact with people; he could build some friendships, and....

            _Spanish, Hoshi, Spanish!  This isn't a philanthropy class!  _But she still couldn't shake the self-satisfied feeling she had that she had done a good deed.

            The rest of her classes poked by at a reasonable rate, punctuated by a rather amusing linguistic fumble in Vulcan class over "lapuramano," asparagus, and "la-kuramano," honorable ambassador.   Lunch, as expected, had revived her considerably, even though she had to listen to Mishal detail Mark's sparkling eyes, his beautiful smile, and his flawless titrating technique.  Oh well, Mishal was finally communicating her feelings, at any rate, and Hoshi supposed it was kind of cute.  Eventually, the conversation had evolved into something a little more substantial, so it hadn't been completely mind-deadening.  She'd walked home, done some reading, gone to dance class... it was shaping up to be a decent, if somewhat boring, day.  But when she walked in the front door, both of her parents were sitting at the kitchen table, waiting in seeming apprehension for her arrival. 

            "Oh no," was Hoshi's first reaction, "it's Grandma Nakamura, isn't it?"  The floral shop flowers sitting on the table seemed to confirm this, and Hoshi stopped dead in the middle of the kitchen.

            "Oh, no, Hoshi," her mother repeated, struggling to take control of her facial expression.  "It's not that at all.  You've... had a visitor."

            "What?"  Hoshi misjudged her mother's expression as that of a person fighting back tears, and she fielded another guess.  "Katsu came home and didn't bother staying long enough to say hello to his little sister?"

            "Um, actually, do you know a Robert Collins?"  her father cut straight to the point. 

            A wave of realization hit Hoshi as the pieces began to fall into place.  "Ohhhh _nooooo!_"  she groaned, grimacing vaguely.  "You're kidding, right?"

            Kioko Nakamura finally lost it, shaking her head through peals of laughter.  "Oh no... we're not kidding."

            "How does he even know where I _live?"_ Hoshi lapsed into her chair, cradling her head in her hands.  "And who does he think he is, coming to my house without even warning me?  Without ever having been invited?"

            "Well..." Yasuo Sato interjected. "He didn't exactly come unannounced.  He videophoned about six times beforehand."

            "Six?!  For god's sake... what did he say?"  Hoshi rubbed her temples, feeling a headache coming on.

            "Every time he just asked for you... after he'd finished stammering, anyway.  Each time I'd answer and tell him you weren't home, he'd get flustered and hang up."

            "Unhhhhhh," Hoshi moaned.  "This just keeps getting worse and worse.  Are those flowers...?"  she didn't even dare finish her sentence.

            "For you," her mother's eyes sparkled in teasing delight.  "Aren't you going to read the little message it came with?"

            Hoshi glowered chidingly at her mother, sighing as she moved to take the little white envelope.  "To Hoshi -- These flowers sit in your presence now, if I asked you to the dance would you have a cow?  I hope you won't scream in fright and put up a fight.  Give me your answer by tomorrow night -- Robert Collins."  Hoshi nearly vomited at his lack of poetic skill.  Instead, she moaned some more, lamenting the direness of the state of affairs.  Why her?  All she'd wanted to do was to treat him like a human being, and he'd gone and taken it the wrong way.  It would have been an entirely different situation had he not impaired their science bowl team and she'd felt some sort of sense of obligation to him... if they'd even _spoken _since that physics class... but as it was, Hoshi felt there was no way she could find it in her heart to accept him.  She'd be leading him on, and that was the last thing she wanted to do.  She sighed in anguish, knowing there was no true **good** solution to this problem.  How could she avoid going with him while sparing his feelings?  She could tell him she was busy.  She was horrible at lying, but she could try anyway.  She could play dumb... "What dance?"  Or there was the possibility of saying she'd already decided to go with someone else... she racked her brain for options, deciding she'd call Mishal for reinforcement.

"Mishaaaaaal,"  she moaned in frustration as soon as she'd finished relating the whole horrible tale, "what do I do now?  I don't want to hurt his feelings, but at the same time...."

Mishal shrugged sympathetically.  "Just say you have a boyfriend in Honduras... a seven-foot-tall weightlifting boyfriend."

Hoshi winced.  "But I'm horrible at direct lying. I can play dumb, but I can't say something completely untrue and keep a straight face."

A little invisible light bulb went off above Mishal's head.  "Ooh, you could tell him you can't go 'cause you're going to that Starfleet applicant meeting thing.  Then you could always ease your conscience by actually going.  An hour being bored by alumni should beat 3 hours trying to come up with new ways to ward off Robert Collins."

Hoshi bounced happily.  "You're brilliant, Mishal, absolutely brilliant."  This way, she could retain her sanity while pushing Robert Collins away as gently as possible.  "I was looking at Starfleet anyway, and it would be nice if the Stone Age graduates could eliminate that possibility from the list of options.  It's getting longer when it should be getting shorter." Hoshi recognized the expression of weariness that flitted through Mishal's eyes.  "It's hard, this choosing thing, isn't it?  I'm so used to keeping my options open... you know, expanding my horizons and investigating every direction.  Now that I have to take all that outward expansion and compile it internally, I don't know what to do with myself.  Where did all that time go, Mishal?  I was supposed to have time to get organized and figure out who exactly I am and what exactly I want to do.  I never had problems deciding anything before, but now... I mean, what if I make the wrong choice?"

Mishal sat quietly at her end of the videophone, her expression conveying miles' and hours' worth.  "I know," was all she said, but in that 'I know' lay thousands of unspoken frustrations and fears.  "Good night, Hoshi.  I'll see you tomorrow."

"'Night."  Hoshi tapped the videophone's console and the screen went black.  She sighed as she shuffled to her bedroom, not even bothering to change into her pajamas before she fell into bed. 


	5. Medianoche

Not much later, Hoshi awoke.  Oh.  She was still in her clothes.  She'd been having the weirdest dream that she'd forgotten to do her Spanish project, and it had been terrible.  Wait a second.  Spanish.  Tomorrow was what day again?  Friday, March 8.. oh lord, she _had _forgotten! 

Hoshi groaned as she dragged herself from her bed, eyeing the clock hopefully.  Well, it was still 11:30, so maybe this wasn't such a tragedy.   She sat down in front of her computer, pulling up the project requirements on her data PADD.  Well, you could do a travel report for any country colonized by the Spaniards between 1650 and 1900, and that didn't sound so bad.  She picked the former Equatorial Guinea, knowing most of her classmates would choose countries from the Americas.   Hoshi raised her eyebrows and sighed as she dove in, sifting through page after page of the world information database.

*

            Hoshi glared viciously at her computer screen.  The stupid thing just had to tell her the name of _one_ stupid hotel in Malabo, and then she could be done with her Spanish culture project and go to bed happy.  But no, it had to go and _crash_, the database mysteriously shutting itself down for 'unforeseen maintenance'.  Hoshi stared into her now-empty coffee cup, waiting irately for the database to reload.  She wondered if she could read the name of a hotel in Malabo from the coffee grinds, like those people who could read your fortune out of tea leaves.  Maybe if she squinted hard enough....

Hoshi jumped as her mom's cuckoo clock suddenly cuckooed that it was two.  My god, two in the morning already... Hoshi quickly subtracted from 7 to find that she could still manage to scrape out five hours of sleep if she finished everything right this very second.  If the stupid database would just reload, she _could_ be done right this very second.  She grumbled, searching for a word to vent her frustrations.  She smiled wryly as she found it:  the Vulcan _sbah sulak._  She didn't even really know what it meant, but she liked the sound of it. 

Her Vulcan instructor thought it was appropriate to teach his students vulgar Vulcan _words_ so they could avoid accidental use, but not the actual _meanings _that made the words so offensive.   Hoshi rolled her eyes.  It frustrated her to no end.  She was halfway convinced that he didn't know the meanings himself.  Vulcans weren't exactly the types to jump at the chance to share their culture, especially a part of their culture that was so tied to emotions... and loss of control.  Oh well.  Swearing wasn't a precise art, and as long as she had a general arsenal to fall back on, she was happy. 

            A little 'ding' rang from the monitor next to her.  Hoshi glanced over, nearly drowning in relief as the database reappeared on the screen.  Thank the stars!  She found the hotel in a matter of minutes, appending it to her report and traipsing sleepily back to bed. 


End file.
